Paul examines how the first week-plus of action has changed the middle-infield tiers we released last month.

Although the season began a little over a week ago, for the purposes of this column, we’re going to pretend it starts today. Any stats a player has accumulated thus far are worthless to the extent that they don’t shift our perception of him going forward. This early in the season, that change shouldn’t be too large. But injuries, playing time shifts, and outlier performances should be considered, even as early as April 11. I give credit to Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski, whose excellent Shuffle Up series inspired much of the format of this piece.

Today, I’ll handle the middle infielders, and throughout the season I’ll cover all positions. To help both those in mixed and -only leagues, the distribution of dollar amounts will reflect AL and NL-only league settings. In this way, bunching around the $1 mark won’t occur, and marginal differences between lower-ranked players can be appreciated.

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